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Asked: 2026-05-22T18:01:15+00:00

I’m following the instructions from various Wikis on how to compile Node so I

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I’m following the instructions from various Wikis on how to compile Node so I can eventually get it running as a service on Windows.

My steps so far:

  1. https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installation
    (which lead to…)
  2. http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2011/03/16/node-js-on-windows/
    (successfully compiled via cygwin, but lead to…)
  3. https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Building-node.js-on-mingw
    (which apparently is better than the so far successful cygwin compile)

So – I’ve managed to compile Node.exe using Cygwin but not the preferred Mingw. I concur this isn’t an ideal situation, building on Windows isn’t the ideal. Nevertheless.

The error I see in Mingw, once I’ve followed all of the steps above, occurs when I try to ./configure --without-ssl. The error message is:

Danjah@PC /c/cygwin/home/Danjah/node-v0.4.7/node
$ ./configure –without-ssl
/usr/bin/env: python: No such file or directory

I understand from step 3’s URL, that I must take steps to provide the environment variables for both Python and Git – using help from the provided URL I managed to input the Python path var, but I don’t think I have the Git path var right. Either way, in no install directories for Python, Cygwin or Mingw32 do I see the path specified in the error msg: “/usr/bin/env“.

Googling didn’t really bring much to the table in terms of env variables or Mingw32, best I got was: PATH=C:\MinGW\bin;C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\bin where my install directory is at C:\MingW\.

The path I added to Windows environment vars for Python was: PythonPath=C:\Python27;C:\Python27\DLLs;C:\Python27\Lib;C:\Python27\Lib\lib-tk where Python 2.7 is installed in C:\Python27\.

I hate it when a file path stops you from doing things, as I suspect is the problem here. So please set me straight here – is it a file path problem I have or something else? And if its something else, please try and help me to get Node up and running… keen as to get experimenting.

I should probably also mention that I do also have a previously installed version of Git on my Windows XP SP3 machine, but had not previously had Cygwin, Mingw32 or Python installed, and I do not have IIS running as a service – my usual testing environment is a WAMP stack.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Windows uses the PATH environment variable to locate programs that are invoked without a fully qualified file path, i.e. ‘python’ rather than ‘C:\Python27\python’.

    So you need to add python’s home directory to the Windows PATH variable, as well as MinGW, git and anything else your script requires.

    Also by setting the PATH variable explicitly in your shell session or script, you are overwriting its original contents (in the local context) which limits which programs your shell can find to only those available within the PATH which is usually a bad idea.

    See http://www.java.com/en/download/help/path.xml for details on modifying your PATH so you can always run your Python scripts from the command line.

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